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MR. SUMMR'S ADDRESS, 



COOPER INSTITUTE, NEW YORK 



NOVEMBER 27, 1861. 






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HCXN. CHARLES SUMNER 









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AN ORATION 



delivered by 



HON. CHAKLES SUMNEE 



UNDER THE AUSriCES OF THE 



YOUNG MEFS REPUBLICAN UNION OF NEW YORK, 



NOVEMBER 27, 1861 



NEW YOKE: 

PRINTED FOR TIIE YOUNG MEN'S REPUBLICAN UNION, 

1861. 



£45? 



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®\u lUMimt :— Jfs (Srijght and gftam-gfjjrhig. 
AN ORATION 

Delivered before the Citizens of New York, 

UNDER THE AUSPICES OP 

The New York Young Men's Republican Union, 

AT COOPER INSTITUTE, 
ON WEDNESDAY EVENING, NOV. 37, 1861, 

By Hon. CHAKLES SUMNER, 

UNITED STATES' SENATOR FROM MASSACHUSETTS. 

The assemblage before which this oration was delivered was remarkable in num- 
bers and in character. Long before the hour named for the meeting, the immense 
hall was crowded, and notwithstanding that the evening was stormy, the proportion 
of ladies present was larger than ever before seen in New York on such an occasion. 

Upon the platform were seated many distinguished Americans, among whom 
may be named Hon. William Pennington, Ex-Governor of New Jersey, and Ex- 
Speaker of the House of Representatives ; Hon. Schuyler Colfax, of Indiana; Hon. 
Lot C. Morrill, of Vermont ; Charles King, LL.D., President of Columbia College ; 
Professor Francis Lieber ; David Dudley Field, Esq., William M. Evarts, Esq., John 
Jay, Esq., Rev. Stephen H. Tyng, D.D., Rev. William Hague, D.D., Rev. George B. 
Cheever, D.D., Rev. Theodore L. Cuyler, Rev. Alfred Cookman, John H. Griscom, 
M.D., Hon. John W. Edmonds, Gen. Prosper M. Wetmore, Lewis Tappan, Rev. 
William Goodell, Hon. Charles A. Peabody, Rev. Roswell D. Hitchcock, D.D., Rev. 
Henry M. Field, Hon. Thomas B. Stillman, Hon. Benjamin F. Manierre, R. M. 
Blatchford, Esq., William Pitt Palmer, Esq., D. A. Harsha, Esq., George P. Put- 
nam, Esq., Elliott C. Cowdin, Esq., Hon. William B. Taylor, Postmaster of New 
York, Hon. Rufus F. Andrews, Surveyor of the Port, Hon. II. B. Stanton, Deputy 
Collector, Hon. Joseph Hoxie, Major A. A. Selover, U. S. Army, Oliver Johnson, 
Esq. 

Charles T. Rodgers, Esq., President of the " Union," introduced William Curtis 
Noyes, Esq., as the presiding officer of the meeting, and a list of Vice-Presidents 
and Secretaries was unanimously adopted. 

Mr. Noyes, upon taking the chair, delivered the following address : — 

Ladies and Gentlemen : — Thanking you, as I do, gratefully for the kindness which has 
called me to preside over this meeting, let me remind you that within the modest chapel which 
impresses with devotional emotions every visitor to Mount Auburn — that most beautiful of 
American cemeteries— stands a marble statue of one of the patriot leaders of the American 
Revolution. Its simple dignity arrests attention and commands admiration and respect. Stern 
resolve and unflinching courage are depicted in lineament and attitude. We see him volun- 
tarily renouncing a high professional office under the crown to take his place in the forum as a 
private citizen, to oppose, without reward, the odious violations of the liberties of the people by 
means of writs of assistance. His exordium startles the prejudiced judges: — 

Let the consequences be what they will, I am determined to proceed. The only principles of public 
conduct that are worthy of a gentleman or a man, are to sacrifice estate, ease, health, and applause, and 
even life, to the sacred calls of country. These principles, in private life, make the good citizen ; in public 
life, the patriot and the hero. 

Then, rising with the progress of his great theme, he continues : — 
Every man in a state of nature is an independent sovereign, subject to no law but the law written upon 
his heart and revealed to him by his Maker. His right to his life, his liberty, and his property, no created 
being can rightfully contest ; these rights are inherent and inalienable. 

We watch the etfect of his indignant words— they convince and awe, and yet the royal tri- 
bunal dare not decide. It prevaricates and postpones, but the victory is won ; the odious meas- 
ure is abandoned for ever, and the orator's utterances have lighted up a flame which inde- 
pendence alone can ever quench. 

We go with him from this first theatre of triumph through many long years of toil and 
anxiety, in shaping the measures which led to the great conflict with the mother country, to 



PRELIMINARY PROCEEDINGS. 



the General Court, guided by his skill and political sagacity ; to the popular assembly alike 
aroused to turbulence and bushed to repose by his burning eloquence. We see him hurling de- 
fiance at the minions of power who, with secret malevolence, assailed his reputation. "We wit- 
ness their malignant hatred, and their deadly assault upon his person when alone and unarmed. 
We see him fall, covered with wounds, and carried bleeding to his home. 

Thenceforward, to the actual opening of the Revolutionary drama, and during its progress, 
this act of regal barbarism obscured, but did not wholly extinguish, the light of the great in- 
tellect which it sought to destroy, but all that remained was a wreck, reminding only of the 
glories of the past. The crime against the person added to its atrocity a greater crime against 
the soul, dooming it to pursue its earthly career in sadness and gloom. Conscious of being only 
a monument of decay, well might the gradually expiring patriot wish that when God, in his 
righteous Providence", should call him from time into eternity, it might be by a flash of light- 
ning. We may rejoice that his prayer was answered, and that— too noble to be permitted to 
die a common death— in a manner equally affecting and sublime, JAMES OTIS (applause) was 
removed to the mansions of eternal felicity. 

It i- the aecessary result of barbarism, in all its phases, to furnish historic parallels by re- 
producing itself in viler forms. Not a century elapsed, and a similar atrocity is enacted in the 
Senate Chamber of the United States. The ruffians Avere actuated by as deadly abate, their 
malice was as foul and murderous, their defiance of law was as manifest, their victim was also 
the friend and advocate of universal freedom, and as much distinguished and feared, and he also 
fell beneath the blows of assassins in heart and conduct. 

But here the parallel ends. This outrage did not impair the intellect which it sought to 
destroy ; that survived the trial— enlarged, strengthened, purified — to set forward in a new and 
more glorious career in the cause of freedom and humanity. Instead of the lightning's flash to 
remove i' to heaven, a divine influence, equal in potency, has emanated thence, inspiring it with 
a larger love of freedom, more zeal in the cause of the oppressed, and a more earnest conviction 
that human slavery produces only evil, and that it should be forever eradicated. (Enthusiastic 
applause.) 

Happy, then, for us, and for our country, has been the suffering of these martyrs in the cause 
of freedom. The name of James Otis has descended to posterity on the brightest pages of our 
history, associated with those of Hancock, aud Adams, and Jay, and Jefierson, and Henry, and 
Rutledge, and there it will remain forever. 

The name of that other martyr in the cause of truth and justice, will find equal distinction in 
future ages on the roll of philanthropists, with those of Howard, and Clarkson, and Wilberforce, 
and others of that glorious company, " of whom the world was not worthy." 

But history has also its retributions. The infamous actors in these tragedies passed away 
under the scorn and contempt of mankind, their names only searched for and remembered 
among the persecutors and slayers of their race. They who countenanced and approved the 
last — by a fitting gradation — became the betrayers and assassins of their country, and two of 
these — the highest in station and basest in conduct — are now awaiting the punishment duetto 
their crimes in a prison within the shadow of Bunker Hill Monument, (applause,) which indig- 
nantly frowns upon them from base to summit. 

In the reality of the present, behold the promise of the future, when all traitors like them 
shall meet a similar doom. Still devoting himself to the cause of his country and to the free- 
dom of the oppressed, the advocate and friend of all, of whatever rank or condition of color, the 
scholar, the philanthropist, the martyr, the statesman, has come again among us, and it is with 
equal pride and pleasure that I present to you the Hon. Charles Sumner, not of Massachusetts, 
but of the United States of America, one and indivisible. 

Mr. Summer then came forward, and was received by the vast audience with 
tumultuous applause, in which the ladies joined with every manifestation of delight. 
The cheers, and waving of hats, and handkerchiefs lasted several minutes. 



At the conclusion of Mr. Sumner's oration, the following resolutions were offered 
and adopted by acclamation : 

Jtenokt'il, That the doctrine enunciated by Major-Genera] Fremont with respect to the eman- 
cipation of the slaves of rebels, and the more recent utterances of General Burnside, Senator "Wil- 
son, and the Hon. George Bancroft, in this city ; and of Col. John Cochrane and the Hon. Si- 
mon Cameron at Washington, foreshadowing the eventual rooting out of slavery, as the cause of 
the rebellion, indicate alike a moral, political, and military necessity; and, in the judgment of 
this meeting, the public sentiment of the North is now fully in sympathy with any practicable 
Bcheme which may he presented for the extirpation of this national evil, and will accept such 
result as the only consistent i~<ue of this contest between civilization and barbarism. 

Resolved, That the thanks of this meeting be, and are hereby, tendered to the Hon. Charles 
Sumner, the distinguished orator of this evening, for bis reassertion and eloquent enforcement 
of the political principle herein indorsed. 



SPEECH OF HON. CHARLES SUMNER. 



Mr. President : — It is my nature to be more 
touched by the kindness of friends than by the 
malignity of enemies ; and I know something 
of both. You make me feel that I am among 
friends. It gives me much pleasure to be 
welcomed by the Republican Union, first, as 
you represent the young men who are the 
hope and strength of the country, and, second- 
ly, as you constitute an association which has 
already rendered signal service in saving the 
country from the rule of the Slave Oligarchy. 
It was under your auspices, that our candidate 
for the Presidency, known and honored in Illi- 
nois, became equally known and honored in 
New York. Nor is it too much to say that the 
masterly speech which he made at your invita- 
tion in this very hall, was needed to complete 
those titles to regard which caused his nomina- 
tion at Chicago, and his election by the people. 
It was he who did the work ; but you supplied 
the opportunity. 

Fellow- Citizens of New York: — 

In the presence of such an audience, so genial 
and almost so festive in character — assembled 
for no purpose of party or even of politics, in 
the ordinary sense of that term — I incline nat- 
urally to some topic of literature, of history, 
of science, of art, — to something, at least, which 
makes for peace. But at this moment, when 
our whole continent is beginning to shake with 
the tread of mustering armies, the voice re- 
fuses any such theme. The ancient poet, long- 
ing to sing of Achilles and the house of Atreus, 
found that he could only sing of love, — and he 
snatched from his lyre its bloody string. Alas ! 
for me the case is all changed. I can speak to 
you only of war ; but do not forget that if I 
speak of war, it is because unhappily war has 
become to us the only way of peace. 

The present is too apt to appear trivial and 
unimportant, while the past and the future are 
grand. Rarely do men know the full signifi- 
cance of the period in which they live, and we 
are all inclined to sigh for something better in 
the way of opportunity — such as was given to 
the hero of the past, or such as our imagination 
allots to the better hero of the future. But 
there is no occasion for such repining now. 
There is nothing in the past, and it is difficult 
to imagine any thing in the future, more in- 
spiring than our present. Even with the cur- 
tain yet slightly lifted, it is easy to see that 
events are now gathering, which, in their de- 
velopment, must constitute the third great 
epoch in the history of this Western Hemi- 
sphere ; — the first being its discovery by Chris- 
topher Columbus, and the second being the 
American Revolution. And now it remains to 
be seen that this epoch of ours may not surpass 
in grandeur either of its two predecessors, so 
that the fame of the Discoverer and the fame 



of the Liberator— of Columbus and of "Washing- 
ton — may be eclipsed by the mild effulgence 
beaming from an act of god-like justice, which, 
within its immediate influence, will create a new 
heaven and a new earth, while in other lands 
its life-giving example will be felt so long as 
men struggle for rights denied, so long as any 
human being wears a chain. 

War is always an epoch. Unhappily, history 
counts by wars. Of these, some have been wars 
of ideas — like that between the Catholics and 
Huguenots in France ; between the Catholics 
and Protestants in Germany ; between the ar- 
bitrary crown of Charles I. and the Puritanism 
of Oliver Cromwell ; and like that between our 
fathers and the mother country, when the De- 
claration of Independence was put in issue. 
Some have originated in questions of form; 
some in the contentions of families; some in 
the fickleness of princes, and some in the ma- 
chinations of politicians. England waged war 
on Holland, and one of the reasons openly as- 
signed was an offensive picture in the town 
hall of Amsterdam. France hurled her armies 
across the Rhine, carrying fire and slaughter 
into the Palatinate, and involving great nations 
in a most bloody conflict, and all this wicked- 
ness has been traced to the intrigue of a minis- 
ter, who sought in this way to divert the atten- 
tion of his sovereign. But we are now in the 
midst of a war, which, whatever may be the 
reasons assigned by the unhappy men who be- 
gan it, or by those who sympathize with them 
elsewhere, has an origin aud main-spring so 
clear and definite as to be beyond question. 
Ideas are sometimes good and sometimes bad ; 
and there may be a war for evil as well as for 
good. Such was that earliest rebellion waged 
by the fallen spirits against the Almighty 
Throne ; and such, also, is that now waged by 
the fallen slave-masters of our Republic against 
the national Government. 

If you will kindly listen, I shall now endeav- 
or to unmask this rebellion, in its origin and 
main-spring. It is only when these are known 
that you can determine how the rebellion is 
to be treated. Your efforts will naturally be 
governed by the character of the adverse force 
— whether regarded as a motive power or as a 
disease. A steam-engine is stopped at once by 
stopping the steam. A ghastly cancer which 
has grappled the very fibres of the human 
frame, and shot its poison through every vein, 
will not yield to lip-salve or rose-water. 

Diseases desperate grown 

By desperate appliances are relieved, 

Or not at all. 



On the 6th November last, the people of the 
United States, acting in pursuance of the Con- 
stitution and laws, chose Abraham Lincoln 



SPEECH OF HON. CHARLES SUMNER. 



President. Of course this choice was in every 
particular completely constitutional and legal. 
As such it was entitled to the respect and ac- 
quiescence of every good citizen. It is vain to 
say that the candidate represented opinions 
obnoxious to a considerable section of the coun- 
try, or that he was chosen by votes contined to 
a special section. It is enough that he was 
duly chosen. You cannot set aside or deny 
Such an election without, assailing, not only the 
whole frame-work of the Constitution, but also 
the primal principle of American institutions. 
You become a traitor at once to the existing 
Government, and also to the very idea of pop- 
ular rule. You snatch a principle from the red 
book of despotism, and openly substitute the 
cartridge-box for the ballot-box. 

And yet, scarcely had this intelligence been 
flashed across the country, before the mutter- 
ings of sedition and treason began to reach us 
from the opposite quarter. The Union was 
menaced ; and here the first distinct voice 
came from South Carolina. A Senator from 
that State, one of the largest slaveholders of 
the country, and a most strenuous partisan of 
slavery — Mr. Hammond — openly declared, in 
language not easily forgotten, that before the 
18th December South Carolina would be " out 
of the Union high, and dry, and forever." These 
words heralded the outbreak. With the per- 
tinacity of demons its leaders pushed forward. 
Their "avowed object was the dismemberment 
of the Republic by detaching State after State, 
in order to found a slave-holding Confederacy. 
And here the clearest utterance came from a 
late Representative of Georgia — Mr. Stephens 
— now Vice-President of the rebel States, who 
did not hesitate to proclaim " that the founda- 
tions of the new Government are laid upon the 
great truth, that slavery — subordination to the 
superior race — is the negro's natural and moral 
condition; that it is the first Government in 
the history of the world based upon this great 
physical, philosophical, and moral truth ; and 
that the stone which was rejected by the first 
builders i9 in the new edifice become the chief 
stone of the comer." Here is a savage frank- 
ness which shows an insensibility to shame. 
Surely the ohject avowed is hideous in every 
aspect, whether we regard it as treason to our 
paternal Government, as treason to the idea 
of American institutions, or as treason also to 
those commanding principles of economy, 
morals, and Christianity, without which civili- 
zation is changed into barbarism. 

And now we stand face to face in deadly 
conflict with this double-headed, triple-headed 
treason. Beginning with those States most 
peculiarly interested in slavery, and operating 
always with an intensity proportioned to the 
prevalence of slavery, it has fastened upon 
other States less interested — Tennessee, North 
Carolina, Virginia — and with much difficulty 
has been prevented from enveloping every State 
containing slaves, no matter how few ; for 
such is the malignant poison of slavery that 



only a few slaves will constitute a slave State 
with all the sympathies and animosities of . 
slavery. This is the rebellion which I am to 
unmask. But bad as it is on its face, it becomes 
aggravated when we consider its origin, and 
the agencies by wdiich it has been conducted. 
It is not merely a rebellion, but it is a rebellion 
begun in conspiracy ; nor, in all history, ancient 
or modern, is there any record of conspiracy so 
vast and so wicked, ranging over such spaces 
both of time and territory, and contemplating 
such results. A conspiracy to seize a castle or 
to assassinate a prince is petty by the side of 
this enormous protracted treason, where half a 
continent studded with castles, fortresses, and 
public edifices, is seized, where the Govern- 
ment itself is overthrown, and where the Presi- 
dent, on his way to the national capital, nar- 
rowly escaped a most cruel assassination. 

But no conspiracy could have ripened into 
such wicked fruit, if it were not rooted in a soil 
of congenial malignity. To appreciate properly 
this influence, we must go back to the beginning 
of the Government. 

South Carolina, which has taken so forward 
a part in this treason, hesitated originally, as 
is well known, with regard to the Declaration 
of Independence. Once her vote was recorded 
against that act ; and when it finally prevailed, 
her vote was given for it only formally and for 
the sake of seeming unanimity. But so little 
was she inspired by the Declaration, that, in 
the contest which ensued, her commissioners 
made a proposition to the British commander, 
which has been properly characterized by an 
able historian as " equivalent to an offer from 
the State to return to the British crown." 
The same hesitation shown with regard to 
the Declaration of Independence was renewed 
with regard to the Federal Constitution, and 
here it was shared by another State. It is no- 
torious that both South Carolina and Georgia, 
which, with the States carved out their origi- 
nal territory — Alabama and Mississippi — con- 
stitute the chief seat of the conspiracy — hesi- 
tated to become parties to the Union, and 
stipulated expressly for the recognition of the 
slave-trade in the Federal Constitution as an 
indispensable condition. In the Convention, 
Mr. Rutledge, of South Carolina, while oppos- 
ing a tax on the importation of slaves, said : 
" The true question at present is, whether 
Southern States shall or shall not be parties to 
the Union." Mr. Pinckney, also of South Caro- 
lina, followed with the unblushing declaration : 
" South Carolina can never receive the plan [of 
the Constitution] if it proliibits the slave- 
trade.'' 1 I quote now from Mr. Madison's 
authentic report of these important debates. 
(See Elliot's Debates, vol. v., p. 457.) With 
shame let it be confessed, that, instead of repel- 
ling this disgraceful overture, our fathers sub- 
mitted to it, and in that submission you will 
find the beginning of our present sorrows. The 
slave-trade, whose aggregate iniquity no tongue 
can tell, was placed for twenty years under the 



SPEECH OF HON. CHARLES SUMNER. 



safeguard of the Constitution, thus giving to 
slavery itself increase, support, and sanction. 
The language was modest, but the intent was 
complete. South Carolina and Georgia were 
pacified, and took their places in the Union, to 
which they were openly bound only by a most 
revolting tie. Regrets for the past are not en- 
tirely useless, if out of them we get wisdom 
for the future, and learn to be brave. It is 
easy now to see that, had the unnatural pre- 
tension of these States been originally encoun- 
tered by a stern resistance worthy of an honest 
people, the present conspiracy would have been 
crushed before it saw the light. Its whole suc- 
cess, from its distant beginning down to this 
hour, has been from our timidity. 

But there was also another sentiment, of a 
kindred perversity, which prevailed in the same 
quarter. This is vividly portrayed by John 
Adams, in a letter to General Gates, dated at 
Philadelphia, 23d March, 1776 : 

" However, my dear friend Gates, all our misfor- 
tunes arise from a single source : the resistance of the 
Southern colonies to Republican Government" * 
* * (John Adams' Works, vol. i., p. 207.) 

And he proceeds to declare in strong lan- 
guage that " popular principles and axioms 
were abhorrent to the inclinations of the barons 
of the South." This letter was written in the 
early days of the Revolution. At a later period 
of his life John Adams testifies again to the 
discord between the North and the South ; and 
he refers particularly to the period after the 
Federal Constitution, saying : " The Northern 
and the Southern States were invariably fixed 
in opposition to each other." (See letter to 
James Lloyd, 11th Feb., 1815, John Adams' 
Works, vol. x., p. 19.) This was before any 
question of tariff, or of free trade, or before the 
growing fortunes of the North had awakened 
Southern jealousy. The whole opposition had 
its root in slavery — as also had the earlier re- 
sistance to Republican Government. 

In the face of these influences the Union 
was formed, but the seeds of conspiracy were 
latent in its bosom. The spirit already revealed 
was scarcely silenced ; it was not destroyed. 
It still existed, rankling, festering, burning to 
make itself manifest. At the mention of sla- 
very it always appeared full-armed, with bar- 
barous pretensions. Even in the first Congress 
under the Constitution — at the presentation of 
that famous petition where Benjamin Franklin 
simply called upon Congress to step to the verge 
of its powers to discourage every species of 
traffic in our fellow-men — this spirit broke 
forth in violent threats. With a kindred law- 
lessness it early embraced that extravagant 
dogma of State rights which has been ever 
since the convenient cloak of treason and of 
conspiracy. At the Missouri question in 1820, 
it openly menaced a dissolution of the Union. 
Instead of throttling the monster, we submitted 
to feed it with new concessions. Meanwhile 
the conspiracy grew, until, at last, in 1830, 



under the influence of Mr. Calhoun, it assumed 
the defiant front of nullification ; nor did it 
yield to the irresistible logic of Webster or the 
stern will of Jackson without a compromise. 
The pretended ground of complaint was the 
tariff; but Andrew Jackson, himself a patriot 
slaveholder — at that time President — saw the 
hollowness of the complaint. In a confidential 
letter, which has only recently been brought to 
light, dated at Washington, 1st May, 1833 — and 
which, during the last winter, I had the honor 
of reading and holding up before the conspira- 
tors of the Senate, in the original autograph, 
he says : 

" The tariff was only the -pretext, and disunion and 
a Southern Confederacy the real object. The next 
pretext will be the negro or slavery question." 

Jackson was undoubtedly right; but the 
pretext which lie denounced in advance was 
employed so constantly afterwards as to become 
threadbare. At the earliest presentation of 
abolition petitions — at the Texas question — at 
the compromises of 1850 — at the Kansas ques- 
tion — at the probable election of Fremont— on 
all these occasions, the Union was threatened 
by the angry slave-masters. 

But the conspiracy has been unblushingly 
confessed by recent parties to it. Especially 
was this done in the rebel Convention of South 
Carolina. 

Mr. Packer said : " Secession is no spasmodic 
effort that has come suddenly upon us. It has 
been gradually culminating for a long series of 
years.' 1 ' 1 

Mr. Inglis said : " Most of us have had this 
subject under consideration for the last twenty 
years." 1 " 1 

Mr. Keitt said : " I have been engaged in 
this movement ever since I entered political 
life." 

Mr. Rhett, who was in the Senate when I 
first entered that body, and did not hesitate 
then to avow himself a Disunionist, said, in 
the same Convention : " It is nothing produced 
by Mr. Lincoln's election or the non-execution 
of the fugitive slave law. It is a matter which 
has been gathering head for thirty years." 

The conspiracy thus exposed by Jackson 
and confessed by recent parties to it, was 
quickened by the growing passion for slavery 
throughout the slave States. The well-known 
opinions of the fathers, the declared convictions 
of all who were most eminent at the foundation 
of the Government, and the example of Wash- 
ington were all discarded, and it was reckless- 
ly avowed that slavery is a divine institution — 
the highest type of civilization — a blessing to 
master and slave alike — and the very key-stone 
of our national arch. A generation has grown 
up with this teaching, so that it is now ready 
to say with Satan, 

Evil be thou my good ; by thee at least 

Divided empire with heaven's king I hold ; 

As man ere long and this new world shall know. 

It is natural that a people thus trained should 



s 



SPEECH OF HOX. CHARLES SUMNER. 



listen to the voice of conspiracy. Slavery it- 
self is a constant conspiracy, and its supporters, 
whether in the slave States or elsewhere, easily 
become indifferent to all rights and principles 
by which it may be constrained. 

But this rage for slavery was itself quick- 
ened by two influences, which have shown 
themselves since the formation of our Union ; — 
one economical and the other political. The 
first was found in the unexpected importance 
of the cotton-crop, which, through the labor of 
slaves and the genius of a New England inven- 
tor, has passed into an extraordinary element 
of wealth and of imagined strength, so that we 
have all been summoned to do homage to cot- 
ton as king. The second of these influences 
■was found in the temptations of political power 
— than which no influence is more potent — for 
it became obvious that this power could be 
assured to slavery only through the permanent 
preponderance of its Representatives in the 
Senate; so that the continued control of all 
offices and honors was made to depend upon 
the extension of slavery. Thus, through two 
strong appetites — one for gain and the other 
for power — was slavery stimulated ; but the 
conspiracy was strong only through slavery. 

But even this conspiracy, thus supported 
and nurtured, would have been more wicked 
than strong, if it had not found perfidious aid 
in the very cabinet of the President. The 
Secretary of the Treasury, a slave-master from 
Georgia ; the Secretary of the Interior, a slave- 
master from Mississippi ; the Secretary of War, 
the notorious Floyd, a slave-master from Vir- 
ginia ; and, I fear, also the Secretary of the 
Navy, who was a Northern man with Southern 
principles, lent their active exertions. Through 
these eminent functionaries the treason was 
organized and directed, while their important 
posts were prostituted to its infamy. Here, 
again, you see the extent of the conspiracy. 
Never before, in any country, was there a simi- 
lar crime, which embraced so many persons in 
the highest places of power, or which took 
within its grasp so large a theatre of human 
action. In anticipation of the election of Mr. 
Lincoln, the Cabinet conspirators had prepared 
the way for the rebellion : 

First. The army of the United States was 
so far dispersed and exiled, that the com- 
mander-in-chief found it difficult during the 
recent anxious winter to bring together a 
thousand troops for the defence of the national 
capital, menaced by the conspirators. 

Secondly. The navy was so far dispersed 
or dismantled, that on the 4th March, when 
the new Administration came into power, 
there were no ships to enforce the laws, collect 
the revenues, or protect the national property 
in the rebel ports. Out of 72 vessels of war, 
then counted as our navy, it appears that our 
whole available force at home was reduced to 
the steamer Brooklyn, carrying 25 guns, and the 
store-ship Relief, carrying 2 guns. 

Thirdly. The forts on the extensive South- 



ern coast were so far abandoned by the public 
force, that the larger part — counting upwards 
of 1,200 cannons, and built at a cost of upwards 
of six million dollars — became at once an easy 
prey to the rebels. 

Fourthly. National arms were transferred 
from Northern to Southern arsenals, so as to 
disarm the free States and to equip the slave 
States. This was done on a large scale. Up- 
wards of 115,000 arms, of the latest and most 
approved pattern, were transferred from the 
Springfield and Watervliet arsenals to differ- 
ent arsenals in the slave States, where they 
have been seized by the rebels. And a quar- 
ter of a million percussion muskets were sold 
to various slave States for $2.50 a musket, 
when they were worth, it is said, on an av- 
erage, $12. Large quantities of cannon, mor- 
tars, powder, ball, and shell received the same 
direction. 

Fifthly. The national Treasury, which so 

j recently had been prosperous beyond example, 
was disorganized and plundered even to the 
verge of bankruptcy. Upwards of six millions 

\ are supposed to have been stolen, and much of 
this treasure doubtless went to help the work 
of rebellion. 

Thus, even before its outbreak, the conspir- 
acy contrived to degrade and despoil the Gov- 
ernment, so as to secure a free course for the 
projected rebellion. The story seems incred- 
ible. But it was not enough to disperse the 
army, to disperse the navy, to abandon forts, 
to disarm the free States, and to rob the Treas- 
ury. The President of the United States, sol- 
emnly sworn to execute the laws, was won into 
a system of inactivity amounting to a practical 
abdication of his important trust. He saw 
treason plotting to stab at the heart of his 
country ; he saw conspiracy, daily, hourly, 
putting on the harness of rebellion, but, 
though warned by the watchful commander- 
in-chief, he did nothing to arrest it, standing 
always 

like a painted Jove, 

With idle thunder in his lifted hand. 

Aye, more ; instead of those instant lightnings 
smiting and blasting in their fiery crash, which 
an indignant patriotism would have hurled at 
the criminals, he nodded sympathy and acquies- 
cence. No page of history is more melancholy, 
because nowhere do we find a ruler who so 
completely abandoned his country ; not Charles 
I. in his tyranny, not Louis XVI. in his weakness. 
Mr. Buchanan had been advanced to power 
by slave-masters, who knew well that he could 
be -used for slavery. The slave-holding con- 
spirators were encouraged to sit in his Cabinet, 
where they doubly betrayed their country, 
first by evil counsels, and then by disclosing 
what passed to their distant slave-holding con- 
federates. The sudden act of Major Ander- 
.son, in removing from Fort Moultrie to Fort 
Sumter, and the sympathetic response of an 
aroused people, compelled a change of policy, 
and the rebellion received its first check. It 



SPEECH OF HON. CHARLES SUMNER. 



was decided at last, after a painful struggle, 
that Fort Sumter should be maintained. It 
is difficult to exaggerate the importance of 
that decision, which, I believe, was due mainly 
to an emieut democrat — General Cass. This, 
at least, is true : it saved the national capital. 

Meanwhile the conspiracy increased iu ac- 
tivity, mastering State after State, gathering 
its forces and building its batteries. The time 
had come for the tragedy to begin. " At Not- 
tingham," says the great English historian, 
speaking of King Charles I., "he erected his 
royal standard, the open signal of discord and 
civil war throughout the kingdom." The same 
open signal now came from Charleston, when 
tho conspirators ran up the rattle-snake flag, 
and directed their wicked cannonade upon the 
small, half-famished garrison of Sumter. 

Were all this done in the name of revolu- 
tion, or by virtue of any revolutionary princi- 
ple, it would assume a familiar character. But 
this is not tho case, It is all done under the 
pretence of constitutional right. The forms 
of the Constitution are seized by the conspira- 
tors — as they have already seized every thing 
else — and wrested to the purposes of treason. 
It is audaciously declared that, under the exist- 
ing Constitution, each State, in the exercise of 
its own discretion, may withdraw from the 
Union ; and this asserted right of secession is 
invoked as the cover for a rebellion begun in 
conspiracy. The election of Mr. Lincoln is 
made the occasion for the exercise of this pre- 
tended right. Certain opinions at the North 
on the subject of slavery are made the pretext. 

Who will not deny that this election can be 
a just occasion ? 

Who will not condemn the pretext? 

But both occasion and pretext are determined 
by slavery, and thus testify to the part it has 
constantly performed. 

And the pretended right of secession is not 
less monstrous than the pretext or the occa- 
sion ; and this, too, testifies to slavery. It 
belongs to that brood of assumptions and per- 
versions, of which slavery is the prolific 
parent. Wherever slavery prevails, this pre- 
tended right is recognized, and generally with 
an intensity proportioned to the prevalence of 
slavery ; as, for instance, in South Carolina 
and Mississippi, more intensely than in Ten- 
nessee and Kentucky. It may be considered 
a fixed part of the slave-holding system. A 
pretended right to set aside the Constitution 
to the extent of breaking up the Government, 
is the natural companion of the pretended 
right to set aside human nature to the extent 
of making merchandise of men. They form 
a well-matched couple, and travel well together 
— destined to perish together. If we do not 
overflow toward the first with the same indig- 
nation which w T e feel for the latter, it is because 
its absurdity awakens our contempt. An 
English poet of the last century exclaims, in 
mocking verses — 



Crowned be the man with lasting praise, 

Who first contrived the pin, 
To loose mad horses from the chaise, 

And save the necks within. 

But this is the impossible contrivance which 
has been attempted. Nothing is clearer than 
that this pretension, if acknowledged, leaves to 
every State the right to play at will " the mad 
horse," but with very little chance of saving 
any tiling. It takes from the Government not 
merely the unity, but even the possibility of 
continued existence, and reduces it to the 
shadow of a name, or, at best, a mere tenancy 
at will — an unsubstantial form, liable to be de- 
composed at the touch of a single State. Of 
course, such an anarchical pretension — so in- 
stinct with all the lawlessness of slavery — must 
be encountered peremptorily. It is not enough 
to declare our dissent from it. We must see 
that our conduct is such as not to give it any 
recognition or foothold. [Applause.'] 

But instead of scouting this pretension, and 
utterly spurning it from the Government, new 
concessions to slavery were gravely propound- 
ed as the means of pacification — like a new 
sacrifice offered to an obscene divinity. It 
wras argued that in this way the Border States 
at least might be preserved to the Union, and 
some of the Cotton States, perhaps, be won 
back to their duty; in other words, that in 
consideration of such concessions these States 
would consent to waive the present exercise of 
the pretended right of secession. Against all 
such propositions — without considering their 
character — there was on the threshold one ob- 
vious and imperative objection. It was clear 
that the very bargain or understanding, wheth- 
er express or implied, was a recognition of 
this pretended right, and that a State yielding 
only to this appeal and detained through cou- 
cessions, practically asserts this claim, and 
holds it for future exercise, tanquam gladium 
in vagina. Thus a concession called small be- 
comes infinite, for it concedes the pretended 
right of secession and makes the permanence 
of the national Government impossible. Amidst 
all the grave responsibilities of the hour it be- 
longs to us to take care that the life of the Re- 
public is sacredly preserved. But this would 
be sacrificed at once, did we submit its ex- 
istence to the conditions sought to be im- 
posed. 

But looking at the concessions proposed, I 
have always found them utterly unreasonable 
and indefensible. I should not expose them 
now, if they did not constantly testify to the 
origin and main-spring of this rebellion. Sla- 
very was always the single subject-matter, and 
nothing else. Slavery was not only an in- 
tegral part of every concession, but the single 
integer. The single idea was to give some 
new security— in some form — to slavery. That 
brilliant statesman, Mr. Canning, in one of 
those eloquent speeches which charm so much 
by the style, said that he was " tired of being 
a security-grinder," but his experience was not 



10 



SPEECH OF HON. CHARLES SUMNER. 



comparable to ours. " Security-grinding," in 
the name of slavery, Las been for years the 
way in which we have encountered this con- 
spiracy. [La ugh ter and applet use] 

The propositions at the last Congress began 
with the President's Message, which in itself 
was one long concession. You do not forget 
his sympathetic portraiture of the disaffection 
throughout the Slave States, or his testimony 
to the cause. Notoriously and shamefully his 
heart was with the conspirators, and he knew 
intimately the main-spring of their conduct. 
He proposed nothing short of a general sur- 
render to slavery, and thus did he proclaim 
slavery as the head and front — the very causa 
cansans — of the whole crime. 

You have not forgotten the Peace Confer- 
ence — as it was delusively styled — convened 
at Washington on the summons of Virginia, 
with John Tyler in the chair, where New 
York as well as Massachusetts was represented 
by some of her ablest and most honored citi- 
zens. The sessions were with closed doors ; 
but it is now known that throughout the pro- 
ceedings, lasting for weeks, nothing was dis- 
cussed but slavery. And the propositions 
finally adopted by the Convention were con- 
fined to slavery. Forbearing all details, it will 
be enough to say that they undertook to give 
to shivery positive protection in the Constitu- 
tion, with new sanction and immunity — mak- 
ing it, notwithstanding the determination of 
our fathers, national instead of sectional; and 
even more than this, making it one of the 
essential and permanent parts of our repub- 
lican system. But slavery is sometimes as de- 
ceptive as at other times it is bold ; and these 
propositions were still further offensive from 
their studied uncertainty, amounting to posi- 
tive duplicity. At a moment when frankness 
was needed above all things, we were treated 
to phrases pregnant with doubts and contro- 
versies, and were gravely asked, in the name 
of slavery, to embody them in the Constitu- 
tion. 

There was another string of propositions 
much discussed during the last winter, which 
bore the name of the venerable Senator from 
whom they came — Mr. Crittenden, of Ken- 
tucky. These also related to slavery and noth- 
ing else. They were more obnoxious even 
than those from the Peace Conference. And 
yet there were petitioners from the North — 
and even from Massachusetts — who prayed for 
this great surrender to slavery. Considering 
the character of these propositions — that they 
sought to change the Constitution in a manner 
revolting to the moral sense ; to foist into 
the Constitution the idea of property in man ; 
to protect slavery in all present territory south 
of 36° 30', and to carry it into all territory here- 
after acquired south of that line, and thus to 
make our beautiful Stars and Stripes in their 
southern march the flag of slavery ; consider- 
ing that they further sought to give new con- 
stitutional securities to slavery in the national 



capital and in other places within the exclu- 
sive Federal jurisdiction ; that they sought to 
give new constitutional securities to the tran- 
sit of slaves from State to State, opening the 
way to a roll-call of slaves at the foot of Bun- 
ker Hill or the gates of Faneuil Hall ; and that 
they also sought the disfranchisement of more 
than 10,000 of my fellow-citizens in Massachu- 
setts, whose rights are fixed by the Constitu- 
tion of that Commonwealth, drawn by John 
Adams ; considering these things, I felt at the 
time, and I still feel, that the best apology of 
these petitioners was that they were ignorant 
of the true character of these propositions, and 
that in signing the petition they knew not 
what they did. But even in their ignorance 
they testified to slavery, while the propositions 
were the familiar voice of slavery crying, 
" Give, give." 

There was another single proposition which 
came from still another quarter, but like all 
the others, it related exclusively to slavery. 
It was to insert in the text of the Constitution 
a stipulation against any future amendment by 
which Congress might be authorized to inter- 
fere with slavery in the States. If you read 
this proposition you will find it crude and ill- 
shaped— a jargon of bad grammar — a jumble 
and hodge-podge of words— calculated to har- 
monize poorly with the accurate text of our 
Constitution. But even if tolerable in form, it 
was obnoxious, like the rest, as a fresh stipula- 
tion in favor of slavery. Sufficient surely in 
this respect is the actual Constitution. Beyond 
this I cannot, I will not, go. What Washing- 
ton, Franklin, and Jay would not insert we 
cannot err in rejecting. [ApjAause.] 

I do not dwell on other propositions, because 
they attracted less attention ; and yet among 
these was one to overturn the glorious safe- 
guards of freedom set up in the free States, 
known as the Personal Liberty Laws. Here 
again was slavery — with a vengeance. But 
there is one remark which I desire to make 
with regard to all these propositions. It was 
sometimes said that the concessions they of- 
fered to slavery were " small." What a mis- 
take is this ! No concession to slavery can be 
" small." Freedom is priceless, and in this 
simple rule alike of morals and jurisprudence, 
you will find the just measure of any conces- 
sion, how small soever, by which freedom is 
sacrificed. Tell me not that it concerns a few- 
only. I do not forget the saying of antiquity, 
that the best government is where an injury 
to a single individual is resented as an injury 
to the whole State ; nor do I forget that_ mem- 
orable instance of our own recent history, 
where, in a distant sea, the thunders of our 
navy with all the hazards of war were aroused 
to protect the liberty of a solitary person who 
claimed the rights of an American citizen. 
By such examples let me be guided rather 
than by the suggestion that human freedom, 
whether in many or in few, is of so little value 
that it may be put in the market to appease a 



SPEECH OF HON. CHARLES SUMNER. 



11 



traitorous conspiracy or to soothe those who, 
without such concession, threaten to join the 
conspirators. 

But the warnings of the past, like the sug- 
gestions of reason and of conscience, were all 
against concession. Timid counsels have al- 
ways been an encouragement to sedition and 
rebellion. If the glove be of velvet, the hand 
must be of iron. An eminent master of 
thought, in some of his most vivid words, 
seems to have spoken for us. Here they are : 

" To expect to tranquillize and benefit a country 
by gratifying its agitators, would be like the practice 
of the superstitious of old with their sympathetic 
powder and ointments ; who, instead of applying 
medicaments to the wound, contented themselves 
with salving the sword which had inflicted it. Since 
the days of Dane-gelt downwards, nay, since the 
world was created, nothing but evil has resulted from 
concession made to intimidation." — Whately's Es- 
says of Bacon. Essay 15, p. 134. 

These words are most applicable to these 
times, when it has been so often proposed to 
salve the sword of secession. 

In the same spirit spoke the most eminent 
practical statesman in English history, Mr. 
Fox. Here are his words : 

" To humor the present disposition and temporize, 
is a certain, absolutely certain confirmation of the 
evil. No nation ever did or ever can recover from 
slavery by such methods." — Charles James Fox, 
Letter to Lord Holland, \%th June, 1804. 

Pardon me if I express a regret, profound 
and heartfelt, that the pretensions of slavery, 
whether in its claim of privilege or in its doc- 
trine of secession, were not always encountered 
boldly and austerely. Alas ! it is ourselves 
that have encouraged the conspiracy and made 
it strong. Secession has become possible only 
through long-continued concession. In pro- 
posing concession we have encouraged seces- 
sion, and while professing to uphold the Union, 
we have betrayed it. It seems now beyond 
question that the concessionists of the North 
have from the beginning played into the hands 
of the secessionists of the South. I do not 
speak in harshness or even in criticism, but 
simply according to my duty in unfolding his- 
torically the agencies, conscious and uncon- 
scious, which have been at work, while I hold 
them up as a warning for the future. They 
all testify to slavery, which from the earliest 
days has been at the bottom of the conspiracy 
and also at every stage of the efforts to arrest 
it. It was slavery which fired the conspira- 
tors, and slavery also which entered into every 
proposition of compromise. Secession and con- 
cession both had their root in slavery. 

And now after this review, I am brought 
again to the significance of that Presidential 
election with which I began. The slave-mas- 
ters entered into that election with Mr Breck- 
inridge as their candidate, and their platform 
claimed constitutional protection for slavery 
in all Territories, whether now belonging to 



the Republic or hereafter acquired. This con- 
cession was the ultimatum on which was staked 
their continued loyalty to the Union — as the 
continuance of the slave-trade had been the 
original condition on which South Carolina 
and Georgia had entered into the Union. And 
the reason, though wicked, was obvious. It 
was because without such opportunity of ex- 
pansion slavery would be stationary, while the 
Free States, increasing in number, would ob- 
tain a fixed preponderance in the national 
Government, assuring to them the political 
power. Thus at that election the banner of 
the slave-masters had for its open device — not 
the Union as it is, but the extension and per- 
petuation of human bondage. The popular 
vote was against further concession, and the 
conspirators proceeded with their crime. The 
occasion so long sought had come. The pretext 
foreseen by Jackson, was the motive power. 

But here mark well that, in their whole con- 
duct, the conspirators acted naturally under the 
instincts implanted by slavery ; nay, they acted 
logically even. Such is slavery that it cannot 
exist unless where it owns the government. An 
injustice so plain can find protection only from 
a government which is a reflection of itself. 
Cannibalism cannot exist except under a gov- 
ernment of cannibals. Idolatry cannot exist 
except under a government of idolaters. And 
Slavery cannot exist except under a govern- 
ment of slave-masters. This is positive, uni- 
versal truth — at Petersburg, Constantinople, 
Timbuctoo, or Washington. The slave-masters 
of our country saw that they were dislodged 
from the national Government, and straight- 
way they rebelled. The Republic which they 
could no longer rule they determined to ruin. 

But though thus audaciously wicked, they 
are not strong in numbers. The whole quan- 
tity of slave-owners, great and small, according 
to the recent census, is not more than four 
hundred thousand ; out of whom there are not 
more than one hundred thousand who are 
interested to any considerable extent in this 
peculiar species of property ; and yet this pet- 
ty oligarchy — itself controlled by a squad still 
more petty — in a population of many millions, 
has aroused and organized this gigantic rebel- 
lion. But this success is explained by two 
considerations. First, the asserted value of 
the slaves, reaching to the enormous sum total 
of two thousand millions of dollars, constitutes 
an overpowering property interest — one of the 
largest in the world ; to which may be added 
the intensity and unity of purpose naturally 
belonging to the representatives of such a sum 
total, stimulated by the questionable character 
of the property. But, secondly, it is a phe- 
nomenon attested by the history of revolutions, 
that all such movements — at least in their 
early days — are controlled by minorities. This 
is because a revolutionary minority once em- 
barked, has before it only the single simple 
path of unhesitating action. While others 
doubt or hold back, the minority strikes and 



12 



SPEECH OF HON. CHARLES SUMNER. 



goes forward. Audacity then counts more 
than numbers, and crime counts more than 
virtue. This phenomenon has been observed 
before. " Often have I reflected with awe," 
says Coleridge, " on tbe great and dispropor- 
tionate power which an individual of no extra- 
ordinary talents or attainments may exert by 
merely 'throwing off aU restraint of conscience. 
* * The abandonment of all principle of 
right enables the soul to choose and act upon 
a principle of wrong, and to subordinate to 
this one principle all the various vices of hu- 
man nature." — (Coleridge's Friend, Essay 1(5.) 
These are remarkable words. But a French 
writer, Oondorcet, the philosopher of the 
French Revolution, who sealed his principles 
by his death, urged this very phenomenon for 
a practical purpose. In a pamphlet addressed 

to the Parliamentary Reformers of England, 

be sought to enlist them in a revolutionary 
movement, and, by way of encouragement, he 
boldly announces that "revolutions must al- 
ways be the work of the minority — that every 
revolution has been the work of a minority — 
that the French Revolution itself wasaccom- 
plishcd by the minority." And Brissot de 
WarvUle, another partaker and victim also in 
this great Revolution, declared that it was car- 
ried by not more than twenty men. These 
declarations were made the subject of a debate 
shortly afterwards in the British Parliament, 
where Sheridan hore a brilliant part. They are 
most BUggestive — even if they do not explain 
the early BUCCess of our conspirators. The fu- 
ture historian will record that the present re- 
bellion — nowithstanding its protracted origin, 
the multitudes it has enlisted, and its extensive 
sweep — was at last precipitated by fewer than 
twenty men; Mr. Everett says by as few as 
ten. It is certain that thus tar it has been the 
triumph of a minority ; but of a minority 
moved, inspired, combined, and aggrandized 
by slavery. 

And now this traitorous minority, putting 
aside all the lurking, -limy devices of conspi- 
racy, ^teps forth in the full panoply of war. 
Assuming to itself all the functions of a gov- 
ernment, it organizes States under a common 
bead — -ends ambassadors into foreign countries 
— levies taxes — borrows money— issues letters 
of marque — and Bets armies in the field sum- 
moned from distant Georgia, Louisiana, and 
Texas, as well as from nearer Virginia, and 
composed of the whole lawless population— 

the poor who cannot own slaves as well as the 
rich who own them — throughout tbe extensive 
n here, with satanic grasp, this Blavehold- 
ing minority claims tor itself 

ample room and verge enough 

The- characters of hell to trace. 

Pardon the language which I employ. Tbe 

word- of the poet do not picture too strongly 

the object proposed. And now these parricidal 
hosts stand arrayed openly against that pater- 
nal Government, to which they owed loyalty, 



protection, and affection. Never in history 
did rebellion assume such a front. Call their 
numbers 400,000 or 200,000— what you will— 
they far surpass any armed forces ever before 
marshalled in rebellion ; they are among the 
largest ever marshalled in war. 

And all this is in the name of slavery, and 
for the sake of slavery, and at the bidding of 
slavery. The profligate favorite of tbe English 
monarch— the famous Duke of Buckingham — 
was not more exclusively supreme — even ac- 
cording to those words by which he was ex- 
posed to the judgment of his contemporaries — 

Who rules the kingdom ? The King. 
Who rules the Kintc? The Duke. 
Who rules the Duke ? The Devil. 

The prevailing part here attributed to the 
royal favorite belongs now to slavery, which 
in the rebel States is a more than royal favor- 
ite. 

"Who rules the rebel States ? The President. 

Who rules the President ? Slavery. 

Who rules Blavery ? 

The latter question I need not answer. But 
all must see — and nobody can deny — that 
slavery is the ruling idea of this rebellion. It 
is slavery which marshals these hosts and 
breathes into their embattled ranks its own 
barbarous fire. It is slavery which stamps its 
character alike upon officers and men. It is 
slavery which inspires all, from the general to 
the trumpeter. It is slavery which speaks in 
the word of command and which sounds in the 
morning drum-beat. It is slavery which digs 
trenches and builds hostile forts. It is slavery 
which pitches its white tente and stations its 
sentries over against the national capital. It 
is slavery which sharpens the bayonet and 
casts the bullet ; which points the cannon and 
scatters the shell, blazing, bursting with death. 
Wherever this rebellion shows itself — what- 
ever form it takes — whatever thing it does — 
whatever it meditates — it is moved by slavery ; 
nay, it is slavery itself, incarnate, living, act- 
ing, raging, robbing, murdering, according to 
the essential law of its being. [Applause.] 

But this is not all. The rebellion is not 
only ruled by slavery, but owing to the pecu- 
liar condition of the slave States, it is for the 
moment, according to their boast, actually re- 
enforced by this institution. As the fields of 
the South are cultivated and labor generally 
is performed by slaves, tbe white freemen are 
at liberty to play tbe part of rebels. The 
slaves toil at home, while the masters work at 
rebellion, and thus by a singular fatality is this 
doomed race actually engaged, without taking 
up arms, in feeding, supporting, succoring, in- 
vigorating those who are now battling for their 
enslavement. Full well I know that this is an 
element of strength only through the indul- 
gence of our own Government; but I speak 
now of things as they are ; and that I may not 
seem to go too far, I ask your attention to the 
testimony of a Southern journal : 



SFEECH OF HON. CHARLES SUMNER. 



13 



The Slaves as a Military Element in the 
South. — The total white population of the eleven 
States now comprising the Confederacy, is 6,00u,000, 
and, therefore, to fill up the ranks of the proposed 
army, (600,000,) about ten per cent, of the entire 
white population will be required. In any other 
country than our own, such a draft could not be met, 
but the Southern States can furnish that number of 
men and still not leave the material interests of the 
country in a suffering condition. Those who are in- 
capacitated for bearing arms can oversee the planta- 
tions, and the negroes can go on undisturbed in their 
usual labors. In the North the case is different ; 
the men who join the army of subjugation are the 
laborers, the producers, and the factory operatives. 
Nearly every man from that section, especially those 
from the rural districts, leaves some branch of indus- 
try to suffer during his absence. T/ie institution of 
slavery in the South alone enables her to place in the 
field a force mixh larger in proportion to her white 
population than the North, or indeed any country 
which is dependent entirely on free labor. The in- 
stitution is a tower of strength to the South, particu- 
larly at the present crisis, and our enemies will be 
likely to find that the " moral cancer," about which 
their orators are so fond of prating, is really one of 
the most effective weapons employed against the Union 
by the South. Whatever number of men may be 
needed for this war, we are confident our people 
6tand ready to furnish. We are all enlisted for the 
war, and there must be no holding back until the 
independence of the South is fully acknowledged. — 
Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser. 

As the rebels have already confessed the con- 
spiracy which led to the rebellion, so in this 
article do they openly confess the main-spring 
of their strength. With triumphant vaunt, 
they declare slavery to be the especial source 
of their belligerent power. 

But slavery may be seen not only in what it 
has done for the rebellion of which it is the 
indisputable head — the fountain and life — but 
also in what it has inflicted upon us. There is 
not a community, not a family, not an indi- 
vidual, man, woman, or child, who does not feel 
its heavy, bloody hand. Why these mustering 
armies ? Why this drum-beat in your peaceful 
streets ? Why these gathering means of war ? 
Why these swelling taxes ? Why these unpre- 
cedented loans ? Why this derangement of 
business ? Why among us the suspension of 
the habeas corpus, and the prostration of all 
safeguards of freedom? Why this constaut 
solicitude visible in all your faces ? The an- 
swer is clear. Slavery is the author, the agent, 
the cause. The anxious hours that you pass 
are darkened by slavery. The habeas corpus, 
and all those safeguards of freedom which you 
deplore have been prostrated by slavery. The 
business which you have lost has been filched 
by slavery. The millions of money now amass- 
ed by patriotic offerings are all snatched by 
slavery. The taxes now wrung out of your 
diminished means are all consumed by slavery. 
And all these gathering means of war — this 
drum-beat in your peaceful streets — and these 
mustering armies — are on account of slavery 
and nothing else. Do the poor feel constrained 



to forego their customary tea, or coffee, or 
sugar, now burdened by increased taxation? 
let them pledge themselves anew against the 
criminal giant tax-gatherer. Does any com- 
munity mourn gallant men, who, going forth 
joyous and proud beneath their country's flag, 
have been brought home cold and stiff, with its 
folds wrapped about them for a shroud ? Let 
all who truly mourn the dead be aroused 
against slavery. Does a mother drop tears for 
a son in the flower of his days cut down upon 
the distant battle-field which he moistens with 
J his youthful, generous blood ? Let her know 
that slavery dealt the deadly blow which took 
at once his life and her peace. [Sensation.'] 

But I hear a voice saying that all this pro- 
ceeds not from slavery — oh no ! — but from 
anti-slavery ; that the Republicans, who hate 
slavery, — that the Abolitionists — are the au- 
thors of this terrible conflagration. Surely you 
may well suspect the sense or loyalty of him 
who puts forth this irrational and utterly 
wicked imputation. As well say that the early 
Christians were the authors of the heathen 
enormities against which they bore their mar- 
tyr testimony, and that the cross, the axe, the 
gridiron, and the boiling oil by which they 
suffered were a part of the Christian dispensa- 
tion. But the early Christians were misrepre- 
sented and falsely charged with crime, even as 
you are. The tyrant Nero, after setting Rome 
on fire and dancing at the conflagration, de- 
nounced the Christians as guilty of this wick- 
edness. Here are the authentic words of the 
historian Tacitus : 

" So for the quieting of this rumor, Nero judicially 
charged with the crime, and punished with most 
studied severities, that class, hated for their general 
wickedness, whom the vulgar call Christians. The 
originator of that name was one Christ, who, in the 
reign of Tiberius, suffered death by sentence of the 
procurator Pontius Pilate. The baneful superstition, 
thereby repressed for the time, again broke out, not 
only over Judea, the native soil of that mischief, but 
in the city also, where from every side all atrocious 
and abominable things collect and flourish." (Annal. 
XV. 41.) 

The writer of these remarkable words was 
the wisest and most penetrating man of his 
generation, and he lived amidst the events 
which he describes. Perhaps in listening to 
him you may find an apology for those among 
us who heap upon contemporaries a similar 
obloquy. The Abolitionists need no defence 
from me. It is to their praise — destined to fill 
an immortal page — that from the beginning 
they saw the true character of slavery and 
warned their country against its threatening 
domination. Through them the fires of liberty 
have been kept alive in the United States — as 
Hume is constrained to confess that these same 
fires were kept alive in England by the Puri- 
tans, whom this great historian never praised 
if he could help it. And yet they are charged 
with this rebellion. Can this be serious? 
Even at the beginning of the Republic the 
of the conspiracy were planted, and in 



14 



SPEECH OF HON. CHARLES SUMNER. 



1820, and then again in 1830, it showed itself 
— while nearly thirty year- ago Jackson de- 
nounced it, and one of its leading spirits has 
recently boasted that it has been gathering 
head for this full time, thus — not only in its 
distant embryo, but in its well-attested devel- 
opment — ante-dating those Abolitionists whose 
prophetic patriotism is now made the apology 
for the crime. As well, where the prudent 
passenger has warned the ship's crew of the 
fatal lee-shore, arraign him for the wreck 
which has engulfed all ; as well ory out that 
the philosopher who foresees the storm is re- 
sponsible for the desolation that ensues, or that 

the astronomer who calculates the eclipse is 
the author of the darkness which covers the 
earth. [Enthusiastic applause.] 

And now. that I may give a practical char- 
acter to this whole history, let me bring it 
all to hear upon our present situation and 
it- duti.-. Yon have seen Slavery even he- 
fore the Federal Union, not only a disturbing 
influence, hut an actual bar to Union except 
on condition of surrender to its immoral be- 
Vou have seen Slavery at all times mili- 
tant whenever any proposition was brought 
forward with regard to it, and more than once 
threatening a dissolution of the Union. You 
■i] Slavery for many years the animating 
principle of a con-piracy against the Union, 
while it matured its flagitious plans and obtain- 
ed the mastery of Cabinet and President. And 
when the conspiracy had wickedly ripened, 
you have seen that it was only by concessions 
to Slavery, that it was encountered, as by sim- 
ilar concessions it had from the beginning been 
encouraged. Yon now see Rebellion every- 
where throughout the Slave States elevating its 
bloody creel and threatening the existence of 
the National Government, and all in the name 
of Slavery, while it proposes to establish a new 
government whose corner-stone shall be Sla- 
very. [Hisses, and cries of Never/] 

Against this rebellion we wage war. It is 
our determination, as it is our duty, to crush 
it ; and this will he done. The region now 
ted by the rebels belongs to the United 
by every tie of government and of 
right. Borne of it has been bought by our 
money, while all of it— with its rivers, harbors, 
and extensive coast— has become essential to 
our business in peace and to our defence in 
war. Union is a geographical — economical — 
commercial — political — military — and if I may 
so -ay — even a fluvial necessity. Without 
union, peace on this continent i- impossible; 
hut lift- without peace is impossible also. 

only by crushing this rebellion can union 
and peace be restored. Let this ' e seen in its 

reality, and who can hesitate} If this were 

done instantly — without, further contest — then 
besides all the countless advantages of every 
kind obtained by Buch restoration, two especial 
goods will be accomplished— < political and 

the otle-r moral a- well a- political. First, the 
pretended right of secession, with the whole 



pestilent extravagance of State Sovereignty, 
which has supplied the machinery for this re- 
hellion and afforded a delusive cover for treason, 
will be trampled out — never again to disturb 
the majestic unity of the republic. And, sec- 
ondly, the unrighteous attempt to organize a 
new confederacy solely for the sake of slavYry 
and with slavery as its corner-stone, will be 
overthrown. These two pretensions, one so 
shocking to our reason and the other so shock- 
ing to our moral nature, will disappear forever. 
And with their disappearance will commence a 
new epoch, the beginning of a grander period. 
But if by any accident the rebellion should 
prevail, then just in proportion to its tri- 
umph, whether through concession on our 
part, or through successful force on the other 
part, will the Union he impaired and peace be 
impossible. Therefore, in the name of the 
Union and for the sake of peace are you sum- 
moned to the work. 

But how shall the rebellion be crushed? 
That is the question. Men, money, munitions 
of war, a well-supplied commissariat, means of 
transportation ;— all these you have in abun- 
dance — in some particulars beyond the rebels. 
You have too the consciousness of a good cause, 
which in itself is an army. And yet thus far — 
until within a few days — the advantage has not 
been on our side. The explanation is easy. 
The rebels are combating at home on their 
own soil, strengthened and maddened by Sla- 
very, which is to them an ally and a fanaticism. 
More thoroughly aroused than ourselves — more 
terribly in earnest — with every sinew vindic- 
tively strained to its most perfect work — they 
freely use all the resources that God and na- 
ture put into their bands; raising against us, 
not only the whole white population, but 
enlisting the war-whoop of the Indians — 
cruising upon the sea in pirate ships to despoil 
our commerce and, at one swoop, confiscating 
our property to the extent of hundreds of mil- 
lions of dollars, while all this time their four 
millions of slaves undisturbed at home are freely 
contributing by their labor to sustain the war, 
which without them must soon expire. 

It remains for us to encounter the rebellion 
calmly and surely by a force superior to its 
own. But to this end something more will be 
needed than men or money. Our battalions 
must he reenforced by ideas, and we must 
strike directly at the origin and main-spring 
of the rebellion. I do not say now in what 
way or to what extent; hut simply that we 
must strike ; it may be by the system of a Mas- 
sachusetts General— Butler ; it may he by that 
of Fremont, [here ih< audience roxe and gate 
long-continued cheers /] or it may be by the 
-lander system of John Quincy Adams. Rea- 
r-on and sentiment both concur in this policy, 
which is only according to the most common 
principles of human conduct. In no way can we 
do -o much at so little cost. To the enemy such 
a blow will he terror ; to good men it will be an 
encouragement, and to foreign nations watching 



SPEECH OF HON. CHARLES SUMNER. 



15 



this contest, it will be an earnest of something 
beyond a mere carnival of battle. There has 
been the cry " On to Richmond," and still an- 
other worse cry " On to England." Better than 
either is the cry, " On to Freedom." [Tremen- 
dous cheering.] Let this be heard in the voices 
of your soldiers ; aye — let it resound in the 
purposes of the Government, and victory must 
be ours. By this sign conquer. 

It is with no little happiness that I now an- 
nounce that this cry is at last adopted by the 
Government. You will find it in the instruc- 
tions from the Secretary of War, dated War De- 
partment, Oct. 14th, 1861, and addressed to the 
general commanding the forces which have just 
effected a successful landing in South Carolina. 
Here are the important words : 

" You will, however, in general avail yourself of 
the services of any persons, whether fugitives from 
labor or not, who may offer them to the National 
Government ; you will employ such persons in such 
services as they may be fitted for, either as ordinary 
employees or, if special circumstances seem to require 
it, in any other capacity, with such organization, in 
squads, companies or otherwise, as you deem most 
beneficial to the service. This, however, not to mean 
a general arming of them for military service. You 
will assure all loyal masters that Congress will pro- 
vide just compensation to them for the loss of the 
services of the persons so employed." 

These words have not the positive form of a 
proclamation ; but, analyze them, and you will 
find them full of meaning. First, martial law 
is hereby declared ; for the powers committed 
to the discretion of the general are derived 
from that law and not from the late Confis- 
cation Act of Congress. Secondly, fugitive 
slaves are not to be surrendered. Thirdly, all 
corning within the camp are to be treated as 
freemen. Fourthly, they may be employed in 
such service as they may be fitted for. Fifthly, 
in squads, companies or otherwise, with the 
single limitation that this is not to mean " a 
general arming of them for military service." 
And, sixthly, compensation, through Congress, 
is promised to loyal masters ; saying nothing 
of rebel masters. All this is little short of a 
Proclamation of Emancipation — not unlike that 
of old Caius Marius, when he landed on the 
coast of Etruria, and, according to Plutarch, 
proclaimed liberty to the slaves. As such I 
do not err when I call it the most important 
event of the war — the more important because 
it is understood to have the deliberate sanction 
of the President as well as of the Secretary of 
War, and therefore marks the policy of the Ad- 
ministration. That this policy should be first 
applied to South Carolina is just. As the great 
rebellion began in this State, so should the 
great remedy. [AppWvse and cheers.] 

Slavery is the inveterate culprit — the tran- 
scendent criminal — the persevering traitor — the 
arch rebel — the open outlaw. As the less is 
contained in the greater, so the rebellion is all 
contained in Slavery. The tenderness which 
you show to Slavery is, therefore, tenderness to 



the rebellion itself. [Applause.] The pious cau- 
tion with which you avoid harming Slavery is 
like that ancient superstition, which made the 
wolf sacred among the Romans and the croco- 
dile sacred among the Egyptians; nor shall I 
hesitate to declare that every surrender of a 
slave by your soldiers back to bondage is an 
offering of human sacrifice — whose shame is too 
great for any army to bear. That men should 
still hesitate to strike at Slavery is only another 
illustration of human weakness. The English 
republicans, in their bloody contest with the 
Crown, hesitated for a long time to fire upon the 
king; but under the valiant lead of Cromwell, 
surrounded by his well-trained Ironsides, they 
banished all such scruple, and you know well 
the result. The king was not shot, but his head 
was brought to the block. 

The duty which I suggest, if not unjent now, as 
a MILITARY NECESSITY, injvst self-defence, 
will present itself constantly on other grounds, as 
our armies advance in the Slave States or land 
on their coasts. If it does not stare us in the 
face at this moment, it is because unhappily we 
are still everywhere on the defensive. As we 
begin to be successful it must rise before us for 
practical decision ; and you cannot avoid it. 
There will be slaves in your camps or within 
your extended lines whose condition you must 
determine. There will be slaves also claimed 
by rebels, whose continued chattelhood you 
will scorn to recognize. The decision of these 
two cases will settle the whole great question. 
Nor can the rebels complain. They challenge 
our armies to enter upon their territory in the 
free exercise of all the powers of war — accord- 
ing to which, as yon well know, all private in- 
terests are subordinated to the public safety, 
which for the time becomes the supreme law 
above all other laws and above the Constitu- 
tion itself. If everywhere under the flag of the 
Union, — in its triumphant march, — Freedom is 
substituted for Slavery, this outrageous rebel- 
lion will not be the first instance in history 
where God has turned the wickedness of man 
into a blessing ; nor will the example of Sam- 
son stand alone when he gathered honey out 
of the carcass of the dead and rotten lion. 
[Cheers.] 

Pardon me if I speak only in hints, and do 
not stop to argue or explain. Not now, at the 
close of an address, devoted to the rebellion in 
its origin and main-spring, can I enter upon this 
great question of military duty in its details. 
There is another place where this discussion will 
be open forme. [Cheers.] It is enough now 
if I indicate the simple principle which will be 
the natural guide of all who are really in ear- 
nest — of all whose desire to save their country 
is stronger than their desire to save Slavery. 
You will strike where the blow will be most 
felt ; nor will you miss the precious opportu- 
nity. The enemy is before you ; nay he has 
come out in ostentatious challenge, and his name 
is Slavery. You can vindicate the Union only 
by his prostration. Slavery is the very Goliah 



16 



SPEECH OF HON. CHARLES SUMNER. 



of the rebellion, armed with a coat of mail, 
with a helmet of brass upon his head, greaves 
of brass apon his legs, a target of brass between 
his shoulders, and with thestaff of bis spear like 
a weaver's beam. But a stone from a simple 
sling will make the giant fall upon his face to 
the earth. [Prolonged cheering.] 

Thank God! cur Government is strong; 
but thus far all signs denote that it is not 
strong enough to >a\v the Union and at the 
same time to save slavery. One or the other 
must suffer : and just in proportion as you reach 
forth to protect slavery, do you protect this 
acoursed rebellion; nay, you give to it that 
very aid and comfort, which under our Consti- 
tution is treason itself. Perversely and pitifully 
do yon postpone that Bure period of reconcilia- 
tion, not only between the two sections — not 
only between the men of the North and the 
men of the South, hut. more beautiful still, be- 
tween the slave and his master, without which 
that true tranquillity, which we all seek, cannot 
be permanently assured to our country. Be- 
lieve it; only through such reconciliation, un- 
der the sanction of Freedom, can you remove 
all occasion of contention hereafter; only in 
this way, can you cut off the head of this great 
rebellion, and at the same time extirpate that 
principle of evil, which, if allowed to remain, 
must shoot forth in perpetual discord, if not in 
other rebellions; only in this way can yon 
Command that safe victory — without winch this 
COntesi will be vain — which will have among 
it- conquests Indemnity for the Past and Se- 
curity for the Future— the noblest indemnity 
and the security ever won — because 

founded in the redemption of a race. [Cheers.] 

Full well 1 know the doubts, cavils, and mis- 
representations to which this argument for the 
integrity of our Government is exposed ; but 1 
turn with confidence to the people. The heart 
of the people is right, and all great thoughts 
Come from the heart. All who hate Slavery 
and who are true to Freedom will join instinct- 
ively in tliis effort, paying with person, time, 
talent, purse. They are the minute men of 
this war — always ready ; and yet more ready 
just in proportion as the war is truly inspired. 
They at least are sure. It only remains that 
others who do not Bhare in this animosity to 
Slavery — that, merchants who Btudy their leg- 
ers— that bankers who study their discounts — 
ami that politicans who study success — should 
Bee that only by a prompt and uinted effort 
against Slavery can this war lie brought to a 
and triumphant dose, without which 
merchant, banker, and politician will all suffer 
alike. Leger, discount, and political aspiration 

will be of small value if the war continues its 
lava flood, Bhrivelling and stilling every thing 
but itself. Therefore, under tin spur of self- 
interest, if n'li under the necessities of self- 

W6 must act together. Humanity too 

joins in this appeal. Blood enough ha- been 

already shed— victimsenough have been offevi d 



at the altar — even if you are willing to continue 
to Slavery the tribute we are now paying of 
more than a million of dollars a day. 

Events too, under Providence, will be our 
masters. For the rebels there can be no suc- 
cess. Every road for them leads to disaster. 
Defeat for them will be bad ; but victory 
will be worse ; for then will the North be in- 
spired to a sublimer energy. The proposition 
of emancipation which shook ancient Athens 
followed close upon the disaster at Cheroncea ; 
and the statesman who moved it afterwards 
vindicated himself by saying that it proceed- 
ed not from him but from Cheroncea. The 
Act of Congress punishing the rebels by giving 
freedom to their slaves employed against us — 
familiarly known as the Confiscation Act — 
passed the Senate on the morning after the 
disaster at Manassas. In the providence of 
God there are no accidents; and this seeming 
reverse thus helped the way to the greatest vic- 
tory which can be won. 

There is a classical story of a mighty hunter, 
whose life in the Book of Fate, had been made 
to depend upon the preservation of a brand 
which was burning at his birth. The brand, 
so full of destiny, was snatched from the flames 
and carefully preserved by his prudent mother. 
Meanwhile the hunter became powerful and 
invulnerable to mortal weapons. But at length 
the mother, indignant at his cruelty to her own 
family, flung the brand upon the flames and the 
hunter died. The story of that hunter, so 
powerful and invulnerable to mortal weapons, 
is now repeated in this rebellion, and Slavery 
is the fatal brand. Let our Government, 
which has thus far preserved Slavery with 
maternal care, simply fling it upon the flames 
which itself has madly aroused, and the rebel- 
lion will die at once. [Sensation.] 

Amidst all the perils which now surround us, 
there is one only which I dread. It is the peril 
which comes from some new surrender to Sla- 
very — some fresh recognition of its power — 
some present dalliance with its intolerable pre- 
tensions. "Worse than any defeat or even the 
flight of an army would be such abandonment 
of principle. From all such peril, good Lord 
deliver us ! And there is one way of safety, 
clear as sunlight — pleasant as the paths of 
Peace. Over its broad and open gate is written 
simply, JUSTICE. There is victory in that 
word. Do justice, and you will be twice- 
blessed ; for so you will subdue the rebel master 
while you elevate the slave. Do justice frank- 
ly, generously, nobly, and you will find strength 
instead of weakness, while all seeming responsi- 
bility will disappear in obedience to God's ever- 
lasting law. Do justice, though the Heavens 
fall ; but they will not fall. Every act of jus- 
tice becomes a new pillar of the Universe, or it 
may be a new link of that 

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